"New Desire" set to open by July

City and federal leaders joined public housing residents Wednesday at the newly rebuilt Desire complex, destined to become a "mixed income" neighborhood at a site that once hosted nothing but brick row houses steeped in poverty.

Ted Jackson / Times-PicayuneNew resident Gladys Nicholas does a little second line in front of her home as the Treme Brass Band plays for the dedication of the New Desire.

Today, the "New Desire" -- or Abundance Square, as developers christened it -- has transformed into a cluster of colorful, new shotguns and other single family homes, managed by a private company. The historic neighborhood, nearly obliterated by Hurricane Katrina, plans to re-open about 100 homes by July, the first in a planned total of 500 homes.

With Desire, the city will have nearly 2,000 units of public housing available in the city, according to the The Housing Authority of New Orleans. Before Katrina, New Orleans had 5,100 families living in traditional public housing developments.

"This is a celebration of coming home," U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said at an outdoor ceremony marking the re-opening of the Desire complex, as a dozen protesters jeered at him from behind a locked fence.

HANO announced last June that it would demolish the city's four largest public housing complexes and allow developers to create neighborhoods that include the poor, the working class and the upwardly mobile. New Orleans will not return to the days of isolating the poorest families in brick buildings plagued by violence, Jackson said.

"We are not going to resign people, because they are low income and black, to live in those kinds of conditions again," Jackson said, directly answering critics who say public housing is being allowed to disappear. "We believe that public housing residents deserve something better than they left. They deserve new homes in an economically integrated environment, where their children can play safely and the families can thrive, not in row houses that were built 30 years ago to house people to keep them away from everyone else."

"I don't care what anybody says today, this is progress," said Mayor Ray Nagin, who joined city council members, developers and federal housing officials at the 9th Ward site.

Gertrude Neville, 64, who lived at the old Desire complex, beamed as she walked into her repaired house in the 1900 block of Agriculture Street. Neville was airlifted out of the neighborhood three days after Katrina struck, as the floodwaters rose to the attics in the 9th Ward.

"This is a blessing," said public housing resident Debra Davis, who was also trapped at the Desire for four nights as the city nearly drowned. "The level of integrity is being heightened."